credit: NASA / click on the image to see a larger version in the same browser window
I spent the whole of Wednesday 23 July in NASA Ares project offices' presentations and have a wealth of information to write about these rocket's ongoing development
credit: NASA
I am on vacation today and tomorrow and will write more about the new information on NASA's Constellation programme next week
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the current Ares-5 design is clearly (to everybody... now...) underpowered for the job but the faster, safer, simpler, cheaper and smarter solution of the problem is NOT to add a 6th RS-68 and two 5.5/6 segments SRB monster!
the simplest solution is to design something like the Ares 5+ (or Ares_33) as explained in this article:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/032ares5srb3.html
of course, if NASA did not want to just land a new collection of flags on the Moon, a BIG rocket is absolutely necessary (for BIG cargo missions) while the (so called) "Direct" is only a dwarf-rocket for this job... and new (strong) evidences (clearly) show that it's not even born before the FAST-SLV concept:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/browse_thread/thread/256e299d48c799ec#
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Amazing NASA has an Ares project office. Wonder if they have any furniture. Looks like they're out of ideas on the Ares V.
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the latest news about the Ares-5 say that NASA is going EXACTLY towards the way I've suggested TWO YEARS ago:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5481
as explained here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/browse_thread/thread/4bee95b668028293
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